


Resolution (Saving What We Love)

by The_Client



Series: Scenes from an Alternate Episode IX (writing order) [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ahch-To, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt Kylo Ren, Hurt/Comfort, Kylo Ren Redemption, Nature of the Force, Rey is Not a Palpatine, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:13:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22229215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Client/pseuds/The_Client
Summary: Rey takes Ben to Ahch-To to recover, and contemplates their next steps into a larger world. All works in this series can be read independently, or in any order.Content warning: mild/brief mental health issues and suicidal thoughts***"In this, too, Skywalker perhaps never truly understood his error. Resist it, Rey! As if the yearning at the root of the island – the yearnings of the heart – could simply be ignored, shunted aside. You went straight to the Dark! As if the merest curiosity invalidated her entire being, made her unworthy of Skywalker's attention, his compassion.How much damage had been done, through all the generations, by such an approach? Were not even rage and anguish and the temptation to harm best examined in daylight, talked through with mentors who understood, channeled mindfully into appropriate outlets rather than denied and suppressed until they festered beyond control?And who better to help with that? Not punishment, which would help nothing and no one, but atonement. A way, perhaps, for him to find some semblance of peace and purpose at last.A way for her to share the terrifying responsibility of mentoring the next generation, that she need not bear it alone."
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Scenes from an Alternate Episode IX (writing order) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1600099
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42





	Resolution (Saving What We Love)

Stoic as he is, she thinks, the Jedi Steps would be beyond him right now. But the _Mirrorbright_ is small and maneuverable enough to land in a flattish area not far outside the village. Porgs scatter before their feet and the Lanai women eye them inscrutably, leaning on their suddenly idle brooms and rakes, as she helps him past Skywalker's erstwhile hut – _too much potential for negative associations there_ – to a serviceable-looking empty one.

She’d tried to heal his injuries as they staggered out of the ruins on Exogol. But that particular manifestation of the Force wouldn’t come to her again, and when he felt her growing faint with the effort he’d gently disengaged her. And much as it pained her, she knew that he was right, that there was a reason the Jedi texts described Force-healing as a rare and spontaneous thing, a miracle encountered in times of great need.

(The remnants of her epiphany on Exogol stirred like molten diamond in the back of her mind, bits and pieces precipitating to crystals of great clarity around the atoms of present experience: _The Force does not exist to negate every loss and risk and discomfort. Without these things, the higher beings would be as automatons, less than droids – no distress, and therefore no appreciation of joy. No compassion. No love._ )

Instead, she'd raided the well-stocked medkit on the _Mirrorbright_ , configuring a multipurpose splint to brace his leg; smoothing bacta patches over the side of his ribcage that he clutched involuntarily, breath catching, whenever he forgot himself and tried to move without excruciating caution. He'd refused pain medication, the words sensible enough – _we'll both need all our mental faculties if we run into trouble –_ but his voice gone more expressionless than any droid's. As if he could hide it from _her_ with mere lack of vocal inflection: the terror that if he let the pain go, whatever hold he had on reality – on _her_ – would go with it.

So she'd cajoled him to recline in the luxurious passenger seat, and – whenever piloting didn't require her full attention – had massaged his hands to provide sensory distraction from the pain, while flooding the bond with all the reassurance she could muster. Surreptitiously she'd traced the shape of his injuries with the Force, deciding that the leg wasn't _quite_ broken, or at least whatever latent fractures existed weren't noticeably displaced; that no internal organs were compromised; that he _probably_ wouldn't be permanently disabled or killed by lack of safe access to proper medical facilities.

It was he who’d initiated the conversation about what would come next – though she’d taken up her end of it earnestly, because focusing on something outside of his own head clearly helped him. And because, well, they _did_ need a plan. She hadn’t survived Jakku by being the sort of person who let an indescribable spiritual epiphany distract her from practical realities.

***

Now she methodically scavenges: warm bedding from Skywalker's former abode, ration bars and the remaining medical supplies from the _Mirrorbright._ In the ruins of the Uneti tree she finds a fragment that will serve as a walking stick, and wraps it with oddments of textile and leather to make a secure and comfortable grip. She thinks to separate her conjoined blades and leave one with him, but she feels him recoil at the suggestion: he’s had enough of lightsabers, at least for now. So she retrieves a blaster – perfectly maintained, of course – from the hidden compartment on General Organa's ship.

It will all do, for now. But the General's go-kit includes credit chips laundered to untraceability, and Rey intends to use them – to search the _Mirrorbright's_ databanks for some backwater planet where she can anonymously obtain more bacta and bandages and food, soap and other necessities, clothing that will be clean and soft and unconstricting (and big enough – Skywalker's hand-me-downs obviously won't do). It will be her first priority, before even checking in with the Resistance.

(Guilt flares briefly at the memory: her own voice over the comm, brooking no argument as the _Mirrorbright_ rose above Exogol. _I'm alright, Finn, I swear. There's just something I need to do. ALONE. Force stuff. Take care of yourself. I'll catch up with you soon, I promise._ But the guilt is as nothing to the fierce triumph she'd felt, cutting the comm so resolutely over Finn's protests: she was allowed – to hell with whether she was allowed, she _would_ – do this for herself. For what she loved.)

“Let the Caretakers help you if you need it,” she admonishes, crouching where he's propped himself against the wall amid her scavenged comforts. “No one else should find you here. It'll be a while before indulging curiosity about this place could reasonably reach the top of anyone's priority list. Besides, the complete map was lost in the evacuation of D'Qar, and when I check in with the Resistance I'll make sure the copy in the _Falcon_ 's computer gets 'lost' too.” If Chewie's instincts haven't taken care of that already.

The droid R2-D2 has seen Ahch-To as well, but she’s not sure it’s possible to alter that formidable machine's memory without harming it. Besides, she feels – in that bone-deep way that she has come to recognize as the Force speaking through her intuition – that the droid, which apparently kept Anakin's and Luke Skywalker’s secrets for decades, will not betray her.

Nor will Chewie, into whose ancient and compassionate eyes she had confessed far more of her experiences with Ben than should have been wise. Who had delivered her to the _Supremacy –_ had given her the _Mirrorbright –_ because he believed her.

She and Chewie had only shared the details of Luke Skywalker's circumstances with the General. After Crait, Organa might have ruthlessly turned the original Jedi temple into her new military base, had not the Supreme Leader of the First Order already absorbed its location from Rey's mind. But Rey had felt the General's relief at this excuse to dismiss Ahch-To's strategic utility, to maintain some sense of privacy around the least flattering period of her brother's life, some reverence for the sacred places of his creed. Organa wouldn't have shared the coordinates with anyone else.

Still, remote as the possibility of discovery is, they should have a plan.

“If you do sense … hostiles, call me through the bond, and try to get to the root of the island. Reach for it in the Force, if you can't get there physically. It will protect you. It's not evil.”

 _(Skywalker had imparted that lesson,_ _she thought,_ _without fully understanding it himself: that death and decay, cold and the violence of nature, were as fundamental to existence as their opposites. The Light and the Dark were useful constructs, distilling the essence of Jedi (and Sith) philosophy – but the Jedi had let the map become the territory, had forgotten that in the end the Force was one, and beyond sentient beings' concepts of morality. It was one’s actions in this life – towards others, towards nature, towards oneself – that made right and wrong.)_

“Rey.”

“What?” Her answer is too quick, sharp with trepidation at the sudden deadness of his tone. It's the voice with which he had refused the painkillers.

“If someone does … come for me.” He seems to be forcing himself to speak now, as he'd forced his body to walk with her from the ruins, pushing through the pain. “Maybe I should let them. Maybe I should … give myself to them, first. The things I've done, they're unforgivable. Maybe I deserve to--”

“Ben!” She knows how the words will cut him even as they rise into her throat, but her anguish, her _anger,_ at the thought of losing him again is more than she can contain. “If you think you deserve so much punishment, what’s the harder penance? Death and kriffing peaceful oblivion, or--”

The way his whole body flinches and shrinks finally stops her. But he completes the thought.

“The loneliness.”

“Oh, Ben.” She rises on her knees so she can fit herself against him, his head under her chin, her arms wrapped carefully above and below his hurt places. “Let that be your penance, then, if you must. _But it won't be like before,_ do you hear me? I will always come back. There are things I’ll need to do – check on my friends, find out what work is left for me out there. But they will never have all of me. _I will always come back to you._ And we'll always be able to feel each other, no matter where we are. You can never be truly alone again. You know that, right?”

Excruciating seconds pass before he nods against her sternum. Her anger is gone, leaving sickly remorse in its wake.

“I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have--”

A faint puff of laughter against her skin. “What? Spoken thoughtlessly and hurtfully out of your own angst?” _As if_ I _could have any standing to hold that against_ you.

“No. When you feel … what you said, you need to be able to talk about it. And I need to handle it better. But losing you again _is not acceptable._ Understood?”

Another nod, and a large hand straying across her back. His emotional tides have receded enough to let him worry about comforting _her_.

“Maybe I shouldn't go anywhere.” It had seemed so obvious, what she _must_ do, when they'd made their plans on the _Mirrorbright_ – but suddenly she can't imagine why she'd been so sure _._

His chin digs into her as he shakes his head, the arm closing solid across her back. “ _No._ We talked about this. Even setting aside the … _practical_ considerations. Your friends, the life you've made – you care about them. It's part of you. All of this is for nothing if you're not you.”

She expels the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, releases him just long enough to take his face in her hands, leans in again for a kiss – reactivating the magic she'd discovered on Exogol, the way it instantly short-circuited whatever bleak thought-spiral he was in, leaving only that helpless, goofy smile. If only for the moment.

But surely if they strung together enough such moments, the feeling would begin to sustain itself. Would become enough to go on with.

_***_

When she lifts off for her supply run – much later than she'd intended – she gazes upon the island below with speculative eyes. Despite her earlier words, she already knows the heart of the work that awaits her in the future: she will do her best to make sure no more Force-sensitives discover their powers ignorant and alone as she had, or misunderstood and tormented as he had. She will not tear children permanently from their families – that remains a historical atrocity almost too appalling to be believed, the first of many reasons she no longer feels much kinship with the term _Jedi._ But a place for learning and reflecting together, without distraction, will be needed.

Where better than the original Jedi temple? She is capable, steadfastly persistent, and the Resistance – the very galaxy – now owes her their freedom, if not their lives. Surely she can find a way to negotiate such a thing, while ensuring the safety of this place and the treasure of her heart that it shelters.

And just like that, enlightenment crystallizes again, sharp and wounding and liberating.

Though it pains her to think of it, there will be others who had suffered too much before she ever found them; or were too sensitive, too early, to the passions that burn wherever sentient beings live. (Her heart twists as she recalls his memories, so sunk into his foundations that he's hardly aware of them himself, but stark and clear to her when their fingertips touched, that night that now seems so long ago: the awareness, before language, before _birth_ , of the souls around him – those that should have been his wellspring of comfort – fretting, all well-meaning, about his latent “darkness,” convincing him before he was even capable of articulating the concepts that he was a monster, unsalvageable. How could he think himself so deserving of punishment, how could others think it of him, when he’d never stood a chance?)

In this, too, Skywalker perhaps never truly understood his error. _Resist it, Rey!_ As if the yearning at the root of the island – the yearnings of the heart – could simply be ignored, shunted aside. _You went straight to the Dark!_ As if the merest curiosity invalidated her entire being, made her unworthy of Skywalker's attention, his compassion.

How much damage had been done, through all the generations, by such an approach? Were not even rage and anguish and the temptation to harm best examined in daylight, talked through with mentors who understood, channeled mindfully into appropriate outlets rather than denied and suppressed until they festered beyond control?

And who better to help with that? Not punishment, which would help nothing and no one, but atonement. A way, perhaps, for him to find some semblance of peace and purpose at last.

A way for her to share the terrifying responsibility of mentoring the next generation, that she need not bear it alone.

Her pensiveness must echo in the bond, for she feels a tentative inquiry. She returns a mental squeeze of reassurance. _Supply run,_ she reminds herself. Perhaps another quick message to Finn, point of origin scrambled, to prove she's still alive and forestall their searching for her. Beyond that, the Resistance can wait a little longer, while she finds out what her beloved thinks of this vision of hers.

_And even when I do go, I will always return._

_We will find a way to keep saving each other._

**Author's Note:**

> Leia worrying about Ben's potential for evil _while he's still in the womb_ is in the _Last Jedi_ novelization (though to his credit, Luke tries to get her to chill out). The _Mirrorbright_ is from the _Bloodline_ novel; I take liberties with its characteristics.


End file.
